


Upon Reclamation

by elesssar



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Fili and Kili survive, Fíli as King, Gen, Happy Ending, Mental Health Issues, its ok though this fic is pretty light, more or less, part movie canon part book canon part au man idk, post-BotFA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-17
Updated: 2015-04-24
Packaged: 2018-03-23 09:30:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3763027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elesssar/pseuds/elesssar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of the Battle, everyone must reconcile their demons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Two Weeks After

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote the first 100 words of this about 6 months ago, and I guess I just finally picked up where I left off. As usual, picking a title was harder than writing the story. That being said I've actually finished this fic well in advance, so the next two chapters will be posted systematically :)

 “You can’t stay here forever, you know,” Tauriel’s voice is quiet, but it still echoes in the silent vaults. Kili starts violently.

“What – how -” he doesn’t expect her to be here. In fact, he doesn’t know _how_ she is here.

“Tauriel, this is a _dwarf_ kingdom, you can’t just come marching in here, giving me orders –”

Tauriel is soft, patient.

“I’m not giving you orders, Kili. I’m telling you something that you already know.”

This is true, but Kili doesn’t want to admit it. Instead he turns away from her, folding his arms around himself. The wound on his chest is almost completely healed now, but it still pulls a little when he crosses his arms.

“How did you get here, really?” he asks, almost sullenly.

“Your brother let me in.”

“My _brother_?” Kili whips around, wincing slightly as the scar gives a particularly vigorous pull.

“Yes, Fili. He’s worried about you.”

“If he’s so worried about me, why doesn’t he just come here himself?”

“He does. You ignore him.”

Kili, not wanting to face the truth of her words, turns back around again, kicking idly at a small ruby that has somehow rolled in. He just wants to be left alone – is that such a difficult concept for them to grasp? Apparently so, because Tauriel doesn’t leave.

He hears her feet crunching over coins and shattered rocks, wonders if she’s being deliberately loud to let him know that she is here.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Kili says eventually, shoulders up.

“Why is that?” Tauriel asks from somewhere behind him.

“This is a Dwarf kingdom. Your people aren’t welcome here.”

He regrets it as soon as he says it, but it’s too late. He tenses, expecting anger or some outburst of emotion (wanting it, even) but Tauriel just hums thoughtfully.

“Perhaps,” she says, and crunches off somewhere else. He finally turns and looks at her warily, and sees her picking her way over to the drum of a fallen column. She doesn’t speak until she’s seated, but then she looks up at him and smiles. It disarms him and he turns away again hastily.

“The kingdoms of Elves and Dwarves were not always so estranged,” she says and she is soft-spoken but her words echo in the empty hall, “the dwarves of Moria were keen friends of the Elves in ancient times, before the darkness in the mountain awoke and that kingdom fell to ruin.”

“I suppose you were there, were you?” Kili says bitterly, “dancing around in the woods, visiting my ancient Dwarvish kin?”

Tauriel snorts in a ridiculously delicate sort of exhale and Kili, surprised, turns around to see her smiling wryly.

“I am only 600, Kili,” she says, “and until now I had never left the forest. What I know is from books and from word of mouth. My people do not leave the forest – they do not cross the mountains.”

Kili, for the first time since the battle, feels something other than numb. He is interested and so, cautiously, he moves closer. She watches him approach, smiling welcomingly.

“You are... at least six times my age,” he says eventually, stumbling over the figure.

“In the years of Men and Dwarves, yes. In terms of age, perhaps not.” There’s something odd in her eyes, something young and girlish and _mortal_.

Kili sits beside her, biting down on the inside of his cheek to prevent a hiss of pain at the fierce pull of the not-quite-healed muscle in his back. He is broken, but he will pretend otherwise. It will not be so long before he is healed.

“Tell me about Moria,” he says to her without looking, examining his hands, rolling a hangnail, “I know all the old stories of my people – Balin is particularly fond of telling them, and Glóin. And Ori always wants to know, scribing away,” he can’t force away the small smile that rises to his lips, thinking of Ori taking notes by the fire, “but tell me what you know. Of the Elves.”

He refuses to look at her still, can’t quite bring himself to, but he hears her adjust her position slightly, settling in to tell her story.

“The western gates to Moria,” she says in her soft, musical voice, “were of course made by the Dwarves. The special kind that cannot be seen when shut. They stood open almost always, because trade was rich there and there were constant merchants coming and going. However, when the doors were shut the inscription was visible, and it was written at least in part in the script of the ancient Elves. I imagine it to still be there, since Elvish writing does not fade and Dwarvish doors do not tend to break.”

 

-

 

This is where Fili finds them, some hours later. Drifting absently through the halls, worrying the hilt of one of his daggers and thinking of other things, he catches the sound of Tauriel’s voice, interspersed by the deeper rumble of his brother’s speech. Quietly, he approaches the door and peers in.

Kili is sitting on a bit of fallen rock, one knee up and an arm draped across it. He is talking, laughing.

The elf is beside him, fluid in her stillness, and smiling.

Good, thinks Fili as he back away quietly, I was right to let her in.

Although he doesn’t understand it he knows that Kili and the she-elf have formed some kind of special bond. Perhaps some of her Elvish magic had rubbed off on him when she healed his leg.

Still pondering the matter, he rounds a corner and bumps into Dwalin. The latter gives a yell of shock and whips out an axe, but relaxes when he sees Fili. A raven, which had been resting on his shoulder before being startled by Dwalin’s sudden movement, settles on Fili’s shoulder instead with an affronted rustle of feathers.

“I was just looking for you, lad,” Dwalin says to Fili, and nods at the raven (which clicks its beak irritably).

“That raven’s just arrived from Ered Luin – it has a message from your mother.”

“Go on then,” Fili says, turning his head to eye the raven.

“This is just a brief message,” the raven says, quoting Dis’ words to Fili, “because I’m in the last caravan and it’s about to leave. I should be there in time for spring. I’m proud of you, and look after your brother.”

“Thank you,” Fili says to the raven and with a squawk it takes off from his shoulder and flies upward to Mahal knows where.

“Thank you, too,” Fili says to Dwalin who inclines his head. There is a moment of stillness as they both think of Thorin.

Dwalin moves to speak, but Fili shakes his head.

“Please,” he says, “not now.”

“Of course, lad,” Dwalin says, bowing his head respectfully.

“Please, don’t do that either,” Fili says and Dwalin raises a bushy eyebrow.

“You’re the King, laddie…”

“Some King you think me, still calling me ‘laddie’,” Fili says jokingly and Dwalin harrumphs, pretending to be offended.

“Nevertheless,” Fili says after a brief moment of quiet companionship, “you hardly need to bow to me. Definitely not when I haven’t even got a crown to wear.”

“I’m sure we’ll stumble across one somewhere,” Dwalin says, referring to the massive ocean of treasure in the grand hall beneath them.

“Ah yes,” Fili says with a grimace, “I rather do need to deal with that little problem.”

 

-

 

“You should go,” Kili says after long hours have passed. Tauriel stares down at him, frowning.

“Why?” she asks.

“Don’t you have things to do, back in your forest? It must have had to sacrifice a lot to come…and see…me?” Her face falls as he speaks and he falters over his words, wondering what has happened.

“No,” she says quietly with a small shake of the head, “I…am not…Mirkwood is no longer my forest.”

“What do you mean?” Kili asks, but he has a suspicion that he already knows. For what other reason could the captain of the guard be banished from her home but for him?

“Thranduil…the king has,” she closes her eyes, looks away, “banished me. He would order me killed if he saw me again. I have committed treason.”

“Treason, is it,” Kili says darkly, “to be…friends with a Dwarf?” He doesn’t say what he truly means.

“It’s not that,” Tauriel sighs but it is, he knows it is, so he stands.

“You should go back,” he says, “beg for forgiveness. Don’t bother about me.”

“That’s _not_ the problem, Kili!” Tauriel stands too but he walks away from her. Every dark thought and negative emotion, banished in the last few hours of forgetfulness, have come flooding back. He wants to be alone.

“Do not walk away from me,” Tauriel says and suddenly she’s there, moving quickly in front of him and blocking his path, “would you _listen_? Valar _save me_ from the stubbornness of Dwarves!”

“If you’re just going to insult me,” Kili says coldly, “you can get out.”

“I’m not insulting you,” Tauriel says, although she looks vaguely chastened, “I just want you to understand.”

“Well explain then, if you must,” Kili folds his arms and glares up at her. She sighs, and her posture relaxes into defeat.

“I admit, you are part of it. But I was exiled for my ideas and I suppose to King Thranduil, that’s what you are. He doesn’t see you as being worthy of life, or his attentions, or anything,” she practically spits these words, “because you are mortal! This is how any Elves see things – they have lived thousands of years and thousands of mortals have been born and lived and died in that time. What do they matter?”

“I don’t know. What _do_ we matter?” Kili says and Tauriel looks down at him despairingly.

“Thranduil is quite content to sit within his borders and ignore the world in all its strife as if we are not a part of it. To him, we are not. But these shores are not the blessed lands and I believe that we cannot sit back and deny action when it calls to us. It is…it is for believing this, and acting on it, that had me exiled from my kingdom. Not…you.”

Tauriel speaks passionately, and watching her speak Kili feels less... alone, perhaps. Or if not quite that, then at least he becomes aware of the possibility that he will not always feel so alone. That all the dark forces of the world that have brought such despair may one day pass.

But still. Havoc and ruin lies all around him and deep in the heart of the mountain, his uncle lies buried and out across the long lake, a city lies smouldering in ashes.

“The world is a cruel place,” Kili says, “I am not sure that it is worth fighting for.”

He turns and this time does leave, stepping over rubble and gemstones towards the shadowy door to the lower halls. He ignores Tauriel calling after him, and resolutely shoulders his burdens alone.

 

-

 

Tauriel does not know her way back to the main gates. She wants to go after Kili, talk to him, and make sure he’s alright… but she knows futility when she sees it. From what Fili told her when he met her, looking harried in the rain on the road leading out of Dale, she knows that he has barely spoken to anyone since the battle. He just wanders around exploring the home of his forefathers, avoiding people.

She knows that it is nothing short of a miracle the way he opened up to her, talking and laughing, although she was aware the entire time of the line between his brow and the tension in his shoulders. It is enough, she has done all that she can do at this time, and yet she wants to run after him, speak with him, hold him, fix all the problems of the world that he has taken upon himself.

But she can’t. So she stands in the great hall of a ruined kingdom and listens until Kili’s footfalls fade into silence. She looks at the dark grey rock, accented by rich green and gold gleaming high in the

vaults of the ceiling. Flame licks in the braziers by the door and the odd gold coin and scattered jewels reflect the light of the fire, throwing cold light and pretty colours high up the gleaming ancient walls.

Tauriel is claustrophobic here. The ceiling is high, but she can feel the weight of the mountain pressing in on her from all directions. It is too silent.

Eventually, she turns back the way she came.

Hall upon hall, passage upon passage, dark and cold and everywhere the gleam of gold and stumbling blocks of fallen rubble. Tauriel breathes deeply, summoning dank air into her lungs, searching for the taste of fresh air. Eventually by luck and scent and a good sense of direction, she finds the grand entrance hall. Fili is pacing in the doorway, and he sees her straight away, pausing mid step and looking over at her.

“My lady,” he says awkwardly, and she bows slightly.

“Your majesty,” she says and he waves a hand at her, flustered.

“Please, don’t call me that. It’s too… well, it’s not me.”

“It is you,” Tauriel says politely, stepping closer, “by title even if it does not feel so.”

“Yes, but I’d rather not think about it,” Fili says, finally putting his hovering foot down and moving tentatively to approach her.

“How is he?”

Tauriel sighs deeply, looks at the ground. She can see the vague shape of her reflection in the polished stone.

“There was progress,” he says, “we talked, laughed even. But then…I suppose it suddenly occurred to him that he had no right to be happy and he grew cold, and left.”

Fili frowns, and fidgets with the head of one of his many weapons.

“I wish I knew what to do,” he confesses, and Tauriel nods.

“I understand,” she says softly, “but I think only time and perseverance will see him through this.”

“Thank you,” Fili says, and she inclines her head in welcome.

“I should be leaving, I think,” Tauriel says, “but you know where to find me, should you need me.”

“Will you come back tomorrow?” Fili asks. Tauriel offers him a small smile.

“I shall return when I can,” she says, and disappears out into the quickening night.

 

-

 

Bard watches the young Elf with interest. She had arrived back late, slipping into the back of the hall and accepting a glass of wine with a polite smile. She now sits with Cathan of the guards, listening to him extrapolate about something or other, but her eyes are distant and her expression vague.

Often she is only half attentive but tonight she seems exceptionally distracted. Something, he thinks, is amiss in Erebor.

With a polite nod and smile to those on either side, he excuses himself from his present company and makes his way down the room. He is hailed by many but politely declines their requests to sit and drink, and instead touches Tauriel on the shoulder. She turns and peers up at him quizzically.

“Is there something I can help you with, my lord?” she asks politely and he nods.

“Mmn. Come with me.”

Politely she takes her leave of Cathan and the guard, and follows him out of the hall.

Outside there is a light drizzle, blown towards the door by a sharp wind off the mountains. Bard huddles behind a brazier, and Tauriel joins him. He stands erect against the gusts of winter wind as if they do not bother her at all.

 _Elves!_ thinks Bard.

“You are more distant than usual, lady Tauriel,” he says.

“You noticed?” she says, surprised. Instantly she looks chastened, as if she has spoken out of turn. Bard smiles at her. He has realised, in the last few weeks, that despite her effortless grace and experience she is really very young. If she were human she would perhaps only be a few years older than Sigrid – no more than 20 summers.

“Elves are not the only beings in Middle-earth with eyes,” he corrects her gently, and she smiles slightly.

“No indeed,” she replies.

“Why is it that you were summoned to Erebor?” Bard asks her, cutting directly to the point. Tauriel’s expression becomes guarded at once, slipping on a mask of polite interest perfected over hundreds of years.

“I do not think ‘summoned’ is perhaps the correct term,” Tauriel says slowly, “I met Prince – King – Fili on the road. He requested that I visit him and his brother in Erebor.”

“For any reason?” Bard presses. Tauriel’s mask does not waver.

“Prince Kili is unwell – nothing serious, but since he and I are friends Fili thought that he would appreciate my presence.”

That sentence alone is enough to give Bard reason to ponder for a good long while. The tiny hesitations, the lack of a formal title before King Fili’s name…interesting. Bard dismisses Tauriel and she bows politely, telling him she will be on watch tonight as usual before disappearing into the darkness.

Bard, considering the conversation carefully, elects not to return to the hall and instead makes his way home, shoulders hunched against the cold.


	2. Four Weeks After

“There are far too many Kings in this Mahal-forsaken place,” Dwalin mutters under his breath. Fili shoots him a questioning look from under his eyebrows, and Dwalin shrugs.

“King fancy ass and King small village all seem to think they have a say in the way Erebor is run,” he offers as explanation, and Fili smiles.

“They do,” he says, “and unfortunately they’re right.” Dwalin clearly disagrees with Fili’s statement, but he keeps his mouth shut.

Balin raises an eyebrow at Dwalin, and tries a different tack.

“What my brother is trying to say,” he says gently, “is that you do not have to give the Kingdoms of Dale and Mirkwood so much of your time, energy and attention. We have our own Kingdom to look to, after all, and –”

“Balin, I hope you’re not suggesting I go back on my word,” Fili says, and Balin quickly backtracks.

“No, of course not,” the older Dwarf says, bread bristling with alarm. Fili smiles tiredly.

“Good,” he says, “then if you’re not busy, send some of Dain’s spare men down to the treasure hall. It’s about time we started sorting out this mess.”

“What…mess?”

“This one, Fili says, standing up and walking out to the edge of the balcony, sweeping his arm out in a grand gesture to incorporate the rolling hills of gold that stretch as far the eye can see.

“I hardly think that constitutes a mess, laddie,” Balin says, and Fili shrugs.

“Neither did Thorin, and now he and thousands of Men, Elves and Dwarves are dead.”

The words are harsh, and Balin and Dwalin are clearly shocked. Fili feels a sharp sting as they fall out of his mouth, but he can hardly scoop them back. He misses Thorin – by Mahal, of course he does – but he’s still furious. Wonders if that rage and betrayal and disappointment will ever fade.

“Damn it, Kili,” he says to himself, turning and surveying again the ocean of cursed gold, “where are you when I need you?”

 

He goes looking for his brother, when Dwalin and Balin are gone. He roams the silent halls, poking his nose into long forgotten corners and trailing his hands in decades worth of dust. Every now and again he stumbles across a body and scurries quickly on, marking the location in his mind. He cannot bear this sorrow now, but later. Later he must.

(Indeed when he returns he sends Nori and Dori out to retrieve the bodies, going with them when they report back that they’ve found more, and the lay all the Dwarves passed years ago on a massive pyre, and sing songs of remembrance and dragon fire.)

But not now. Now, Fili hurries on, climbing higher up the mountain until the stairways fall into narrow disrepair. The higher he gets the rougher hewn the stairs become, until they become indistinguishable as Dwarvish work and could be any old ladder built by Men. But up he goes, around and around, until at last he reaches a door, carved haphazardly in the stone and marked on the mantle with the sign of Erebor. It is ajar.

Slowly, Fili pushes it open.

Kili is sitting cross-legged in the middle of the small triangular room. The ceiling is high, and there are evenly spaced slits in the edge of the mountain, allowing weak winter sunlight to illuminate the

chamber. The walls are not polished or inlaid; only rough graphite, but they are painted with beautiful renderings of history. Fili sees a painting of the hammer and stars of Durin’s line, and a silver door with some kind of tree in front of it.

“What is this place?” he asks Kili, who shrugs one shoulder.

“Dunno. Found it,” he says, not looking around.

Softly Fili steps further into the room, and looks around properly. The colours are faded somewhat and the paint is chipped away in places, but still is beautiful in a unique way, awash with colour and gentle grey light.

“This place feels like a secret,” he says reverently.

Kili grunts in reply, and grunts again when Fili sits down next to him.

“Ki. Please.”             

“What, Fili?” Kili snaps, turning halfway and glaring at him. His face is dark, angry, but his eyes are bitterly sad. “What do you want me to say?”

“Nothing. Anything. I don’t know. Please come back.”

“I haven’t gone anywhere.”

“Yes, you have!” Fili insist, and raises a hand to prod at his brother temple, “in here! You’re not _around_ anymore, Kili, not the way you used to be! I know you’re sad, we’re all sad, but please. You don’t have to do this alone.”

“I don’t know,” Kili says, so softly and quietly and slowly, “how to do ‘this’ any other way.”

“Just let me be help you,” Fili pleads, “the others, too. Dwalin, Bofur. Tauriel, even.”

“She did help,” Kili says with a small smile. There is a tiny bit of the old spark in his eyes and Fili latches on to that hope.

“You see that?” Kili asks, nodding at the door with the tree.

“Yeah.”

“Tauriel told me about that. I think it’s the gate to Moria, the one made my dwarves but painted and by the Elvish friends of Khazad-dûm.”

“Huh,” Fili grunts, getting up to have a closer look. The painting isn’t very detailed so he steps back beside his brother, folding his arms and examining the paintings around it.

“Are these Elves, d’you think?” he asks his brother, moving forward again to point a group of long colourful beings walking along the bottom of the wall.

“I was thinking that, yeah. And this,” Kili sounds more alive than he has for weeks, and he moves forward on his knees to get closer to the wall, pointing out a picture of a large gathering of tall and small people, “I think this is the market outside of Moria, or something. It’s Dwarves and Elves, definitely. I think these squares are supposed to represent stalls.”

“Yeah, I reckon you’re right,” Fili says, peering slower, “most of these short people have beards.”

“Yeah,” Kili smiles.

“We should show Ori this place,” Fili says, leaning back and looking around again, “he’d love it.”

“Ah, Fi…look, can I have it? Just for now? It’s...I don’t really want anyone else to know about it.”

“Yeah,” Fili says, looking across at his younger brother, “yeah, of course. It’s like I said before I guess, that this place feels like a secret. It can be yours.”

“Thanks, your Majesty,” Kili says with a grin that looks so happy and innocent and just like old times.

“Shut up,” Fili says, and cuffs a chortling Kili over the head.

 

-

 

There are snowdrops growing at the foot of the mountain. Tauriel pauses, looking down at them. They make her feel sad, and she doesn’t know quite why. In a fluid motion she reaches down and strokes the petals, feeling the thriving life. In the distance, she hears the rustling of the remaining stubborn leaves in Mirkwood.

Slowly she stands, turns.

Mirkwood is a dark bar on the horizon, sitting at the foot of the distant mountains which pierce the pale sky like teeth. Beyond those mountains is a world she does not know, has never seen.

There are Dwarves now making their way across the wide lands between the ocean at the edge of the world and here. Making their way home. Erebor is a symbol, now, of light and warmth and reclamation. Mirkwood is fading. Be it 500 years from now of 5000, the spirits of her people will fade. No longer will Silvan elves run through the trees and dance in the meadows. The forest will be just that, a forest, and it’s once merry inhabitants will fade to mist and memory.

Perhaps, thinks Tauriel, as she turns and stares up at Erebor, the lonely mountain standing proudly in the wilderness, the Dwarves shall meet the same fate. Perhaps they shall hide in their mountains until

they turn back to the stone from whence they came, and the mountains will seal themselves shut and all will be forgotten.

Over the sea, the immortal Elves will live on as they have for thousands of years and will for thousands more, as Middle-earth fades away and becomes a forgotten land of darkness and winter.

It has been a full cycle of the moon since the Battle of the Five Armies, and still the pyres burn. Far away on the opposite arm of the mountain, a thick line of black smoke coils into the sky, a message to all enemies: you were defeated here.

Still in her mind’s eye Tauriel recalls the battle. Blood-slicked earth, air heady with the scent of it. The clang of swords and yell of Men and Orcs and Dwarves and Elves. The twang of arrows, the screams of the dying. She can still feel the ghost of pain in her head from where she was thrown against a rock, still feel the gash in her side from an arrow that sliced too close. Still see Kili with a sword in his chest, firing his last arrow into the face of a snarling orc.

It is too much.

She sits down on the edge of the mountain with a lonely snowdrop for company, and she weeps.

 

Night is falling when she becomes aware of Kili’s presence. She recognises his footsteps, and looks up at him. He stands a few feet away, looking softly down at her.

“My brother said you were coming. I was worried you hadn’t arrived.”

“I apologise,” she says, “I was distracted.”

“It does seem to happen that way,” Kili says and sits down heavily beside her with a sigh. He radiates warmth. “Everything is bearable, life is moving on, and then suddenly…you realise the world is a terrible place, and wonder how you can stand it.”

“This is why I left,” she says quietly, staring out across the lake. A lone lick of flame is still burning, after all this time. “I thought if I left Mirkwood, brought out the elves to give aid to the world, it would fix it. We could fight darkness, eradicate it forever. But the darkness isn’t gone, just displaced, and the destruction that such a fight brought...I wonder, now, if it was worth it.”

“I came all this way,” Kili says, “believing in…adventure. That taking back our homeland would be easy, and the victory sweet. I was wrong.”

“Were we both wrong, then?” Tauriel asks, looking over at him. She feels as if she is on a precipice, so close to tumbling over the edge and losing…what, she doesn’t know. Some sort of abyss is looming before her, and she is terrified of its depths. “Is this world not worth anything at all? Would we be happier if we had stayed home, sealed our doors, and just accepted our fates of…of fading from the world?”

“I don’t know,” Kili whispers, with a deep and shuddering breath.

Slowly, tentatively, Tauriel takes his hand. He knots his fingers with hers and they sit silent on the doorstep of Erebor, silently watching the stars wink one by one into the sky.

 

-

 

Bard, in his short time as ‘King’ of Dale, has come to expect many things. People bowing to him, gifts being left at his door, people taking his decisions to be law…one thing that he did not expect and has rather been caught unawares by, however, is the arrival of the lean and ethereal Elven prince in his kitchen.

“I…my lord Legolas,” Bard says from the doorway, unsure whether he should bow or not. Sigrid and Tilda are sitting on either side of the Elf, looking somewhat reverentially up at him. Said Elf looks somewhat out of place sitting at the kitchen table, wearing full armour and surrounded by crumbs from breakfast.

“Bard,” Legolas says, standing up and bending himself forward in a way that is almost a bow but not quite.

“Can I…would you…what,” Bard is having a lot of difficulty formulating a question that would quite articulate his confusion, but to his credit Legolas understands.

“I am not here as Prince of the Woodland Realm,” he says. Bard is suddenly and inexplicably reminded that the Elf is several thousand years old. “I merely wish to discuss something with you as…if not as friend then certainly as an acquaintance.”

“Right,” Bard says, still nonplussed as to what Legolas possibly has to discuss with him, “girls, off you go.”

“Must we?” complains Tilda and Sigrid shushes her, but the older girl is blushing. Bard smiles at them.

“Yes, unfortunately. Go and get Bain out of bed. He seems to be having a lot of difficulty doing that of late.”

“Yes, Da,” Sigrid says, bowing awkwardly to Legolas and tugging Tilda, still staring with wide eyes at the Elf, out the door behind her.

Once the kitchen door has clicked shut, Bard sits down slowly. Legolas copies him, graceful but looking ill at ease.

“I’ve come about Tauriel,” he says, and instantly Bard understands.

“Of course, you two are close. I seem to remember hearing my children telling tales about how you two destroyed my kitchen together,” he says with a smile. Legolas inclines his head slightly in recognition of Bard’s statement.

“I would say that the orcs did more damage than we, but nevertheless. I apologise.”

“It’s no matter, seeing as Laketown was completely annihilated that night anyway.”

In the slightly awkward silence that follows, Legolas drops his guard completely.

“How is she?” he asks nervously, and Bard frowns.

“I hardly think I’m the authority on Tauriel’s physical and mental state. I don’t often see her. Shouldn’t you be asking _her_ that?”

Legolas presses his fingertips together, frowning at his hands as if they are some sort of distressing foreign object he has not seen before. Bard watches this with interest. He himself is sitting cautiously, legs out the side of the chair, ready to spring up at any moment. He is rarely relaxed even when it is just he and his children.

“I have not yet seen Tauriel, since I arrived here,” Legolas says slowly, “I came here first. I wanted to hear an outsider’s perspective on her wellbeing, someone that doesn’t know her well.”

A vague inkling of suspicion is settling in.

“I’ll tell you my observations,” Bard says frankly, “because I have been making them – _if_ you tell me exactly why it is that she is here and not in Mirkwood, and just why her being here is enough of an event that you’re here asking questions about her.”

“A fair bargain,” Legolas says, and then sighs, “My father had her exiled from the Woodland realm. She committed a series of minor offences that, to him, make a treasonous whole.”

Bard makes a note of the way Legolas is talking about Thranduil with vague disquiet, and adds it to his ever-growing list of observations.

“These minor infractions were… breaking no laws. Her perspective on the world is something not often found among my kind, and my father did not take kindly to them. Tauriel believes that we are a part of this world, and should not hide behind our walls whilst the world moves on around us. Many would agree with her, but my father is king and none shall defy him.”

“And her fondness for Prince Kili of Erebor has _nothing_ to do with her exile?” Bard asks sarcastically and Legolas’ face freezes.

“You…are correct,” he says eventually, “Many do not feel that…their friendship is acceptable.”

“Friendship? Yes, she called it that too.”

“You’ve spoken with her about this?” Legolas looks surprised.

“These people now call me their King,” Bard says, nodding towards the window, out of which much of the city of Dale (in various states of disrepair) can be seen, “that makes it my job to know what’s going on.”

“Well then,” says Legolas, “you can answer my question – is she alright?”

“She keeps busy,” Bard says cautiously. In truth he does not have all that much to say – of course he has _noticed_ Tauriel and kept an eye on her involvements in Dale, but he has other concerns to address in the running of the town. “She works with the guard, offering them training and sharing her skills.”

“Of course,” Legolas smiles sadly, “In Mirkwood she was Captain of the Guard.”

“She takes night watch every night – I do not think she sleeps,” Bard continues, “during the day, when there is little else to be done, she assists as a healer. Sometimes she is not here at all.”

“Where does she go?” Legolas frowns.

Bard is almost tempted to sarcastically ask Legolas if he can’t guess, but refrains. Legolas is royalty after all, and Bard often has to remind himself that he is an officially recognised leader at all.

“Erebor,” he instead says simply, and Legolas nods slowly.

“Indeed,” he says quietly, and falls deep into silence.

The silence has become extended enough for Bard to feel uncomfortable when the door to the kitchen bangs open and Bain slopes in. When he sees Legolas sitting primly at the kitchen table, his eyes widen and his mouth falls open into a perfect ‘o’ of surprise. Bard bites back a laugh.

“Bain,” he says to his son, “you know Prince Legolas better than I, I imagine.”

“N-not really,” Bain says, eyeing the elf cautiously, “he just turned up, decapitated a few Orcs and disappeared again. Er. Should I bow?” This last question is half addressed to Legolas, half to Bard, and both he and the Elf Prince smile.

“No need, I am not my father after all,” Legolas says cryptically, getting to his feet. He turns to Bard, who also rises from his chair. The Elvish Prince bows slightly, smiling at him.

“Thank you for your time,” he says, and takes his leave.

“Do you think I could get him to teach me how to fight?” Bain asks his father, sounding slightly awed.

“Perhaps if you ask him. Elves must have plenty of spare time,” he replies absently.

There is a rustle in the doorway and Legolas reappears. He is so tall that his head is barely an inch away from the top of the stone doorframe.

“I apologise,” he says, “but my people have particularly sharp hearing,” he looks down shrewdly at Bain, “I would, of course, gladly offer the young master some counsel in combat training whilst I remain here in Dale.”

“How long will you be here?” Bard asks and Legolas smiles.

“Only until this evening.”

Within seconds, Bain has bundled himself out of the door after the Prince, and Bard is left standing in the kitchen, marvelling at the unusual twist his life has taken in the last two months.

 

-

 

Tauriel walks down the main street of Dale, up the hill towards the hall. There are a few people about and most of them greet her with a word or a smile. She is still foreign here, an object of interest, but these people seem to like her. Of that she is grateful.

To the east, she can hear the clang of swords and a few men cheering. Clearly some of the guard are practising their sword play. Changing tack, she walks with purpose down a side road that curves along and down until it ends at the warped gate to the guard barracks. The gate, as always, is standing open propped wonkily against the wall. Beyond, a wide expanse of dirt used for training stretches out, ending with barracks on all sides. Men are grouped on three sides, watching two men – Kirian and Aallan from the looks of it – practising a dual wielding sword fight. She smiles, and then her eye catches on a flash of long fair hair in the corner by the archery targets.

He is standing with Bard’s son, demonstrating a knife trick that she herself taught him. The young child is dirty, exhausted, and clearly enraptured.

“Legolas!” Tauriel calls, moving speedily across the quadrangle towards her friend. Just by his presence, her heart feels lighter than it has in the month since the battle.

“Tauriel,” he says, turning towards her with a smile as she reaches him, and pulls him to her in a brief embrace.

“We must speak, mellon,” he says and she nods curtly, stepping back.

“Yes, I agree,” she says, “but I’ll not interrupt your training, young one,” she adds with a small smile at Bard’s son.

She moves back and watches Legolas continue his demonstration, but after only a moment clicks her tongue and steps in.

“No, Legolas, you are doing it wrong - I taught him this, you know, he’s never been quite as good at it as I am - look, I will demonstrate. Both of you, watch and learn.”

Legolas scoffs and Bain laughs. With a flick of her hair Tauriel steps back and pulls her knives from her hips, demonstrating first quickly and then slower.

She then offers her knives to Bain, who masters it with far more speed than Legolas ever did.

Eventually many of the guard not on duty gravitate towards them – it is quite a spectacle, she supposes, two Elves and one of them Sindar – and ask for a demonstration of their fighting skills.

Legolas and Tauriel, who have spent hundreds of years sparring together, agree.

It is so easy, to slip into the old familiar rhythm. It is like a dance with a partner as familiar as oneself. Although the setting is different - a half ruined stone city of men rather than a leafy glade – the movements are ancient and natural. Legolas today fights with an edge and in response Tauriel channels her frustration and sadness at being exiled from the forest, and their duel takes on a new rawness.

Soon, they are jumping on and off the wall between the training ground and the road, leaping and twirling through the air. Although they fire no arrows, the men watching their spar are constantly forced to dive out of their way. Eventually Tauriel executes a particularly impressive move using a large chunk of fallen stone as a launch and sailing through the air to land with a thud on top of her friend. Within seconds he is on the ground with a knife at his neck.

She has to laugh, however, when she feels a prick at her stomach.

“Stalemate, I think,” she announces, sheathing her weapons and rolling away, offering a hand to pull Legolas to his feet.

It hits her, suddenly, how much she misses her home and her title and the days before everything changed, where her days were spent running through the trees and her night drinking and dancing with her kin.

“I will leave you now,” she says to Legolas with a bow, “I believe young master Bain could learn a few more skills from you before the sun sets.”

“Wait,” Legolas says to her in Sindarin, taking her forearm as she moves to go, “where shall I meet you?”

“I will wait for you just within the main gate of the city as the sun sets,” she says, and he nods curtly, stepping back and letting her go.

 

-

It is so silent down here, so still. Kili feels as if the air in his lungs is a whisper, the blood in his veins reverence itself, and the burn in his throat Mahal’s fire.

The ceiling’s this far below the mountain are not so high. Kili remembers vividly the way that, at his uncle’s funeral, the Elf King Thranduil had almost had to stoop to prevent the top of his crown from brushing the ceiling.

Kili looks up. In the dark obsidian of which the tomb is built, the ceiling is inlaid with diamonds that glitter like stars in the white fire that burns in the torch left to rest on a pedestal by the door.

Thorin’s coffin is made of the rock of the mountain, a simple sealed rectangle with an inscription bearing a legend. Within that tomb the Arkenstone is concealed, and good riddance.

Kili would have it destroyed, thrown into the ocean, buried deep within Mirkwood. He hates it, hates what it caused, what it represents.

And there, within the tomb, his uncle’s body decays. He himself had been injured before that final, fatal blow. Fili had been in the wrong place, came at the wrong angle to take the blow. So it was that Thorin Oakenshield died with his sword buried to the hilt in Azog’s chest, as Azog’s blade protruded from his neck.

Kili bites down on his thumb hard.

He shouldn’t do this to himself, he knows. Come down here, dwell on events he could not and cannot change. But when he is with Fili, discussing the arrival of their people or the rebuilding of Erebor, he feels at odds, like a loose thread flapping in the wind. Even when he works physically, lifting stone or working the pulleys that lift stone for him, he feels the pointlessness of it all.

What does it matter, that they have reclaimed Erebor? What does it matter, that there is an ocean of gold and a kingdom to rebuild? What does any of it matter, when it comes at the price of so much death?

“I wish it had been me,” he whispers, and his quiet words echo in the silent chamber, “Mahal, if I could change anything, I wish it had been me.”

 

-

 

Tauriel is waiting at the gate when he arrives.

“Come, my friend,” she says in Sindarin, “let us walk together.”

He joins her silently as she leaves the city into the soft dusk, stepping delicately atop the snow as she leads the way down the long valley, keeping Ravenhill at her back. For a long time, they walk in silence.

“I have left Mirkwood,” Legolas says eventually, and Tauriel glances sharply at him.

“Not forever,” he continues, “and I will return, likely sooner rather than later. But I felt that…I believe my father is wrong. I do not know that I can be subordinate to him when I am still so angry for what he has done to you.”

“I bear King Thranduil no ill will,” Tauriel murmurs, “and although I do not understand why he has become so hard and cruel and closed off from the world, I do not blame him for it.”

“And it is good that you do not. It shows that you are good of heart, and kind, for all you are a fearless warrior. But I see him differently, and I cannot yet forgive him.”

“But you will.”

“Indeed,” Legolas says, and they walk in silence for a few more miles. The moon has risen well into the sky before they speak again.

“Where will you go?” Tauriel asks. She has been sneaking small glances at Legolas as they walk, trying to assess what it is about him that has changed – or if the subtle shift in their friendship that is palpable enough to be awkward is all down to her. She suspects rather the latter.

“I do not know,” Legolas says, staring upwards into the dark night. “Perhaps I shall go south to Lothlórien, or east, Rhûn maybe. I think, however, that I may start by going north, cross into Eriador north of Gundabad.”

“A true adventure,” Tauriel says with a smirk at her lips and Legolas meets her eyes, smiling at her in the sly conspiratorial way that has become so familiar to them both over the centuries.

“I feel my presence will be required back here soon enough,” Legolas says, turning his body around and staring into the distance to the small dark smudge that they call home. “There is darkness still in this world that has yet to come to pass.”

“And you will meet this darkness head on?” Tauriel enquires and Legolas nods slowly.

“You are right, after all,” he says, “we are a part of this world, immortal and ancient beings as we may be. Those of us that have not yet sailed have thus made a promise to Middle-earth that must be kept.”

Tauriel glances behind her briefly before making her way over to a large boulder. Sitting on it, she stares up at the stars. Legolas comes to sit beside her, waiting for her to speak.

Tauriel, trying to avoid the inevitable, focuses on everything that she can see and feel around her. The pleasing coolness of the winter air, and roughness of the rock beneath her legs. The feel of her worn and tattered linen and leather clothing against her skin. The glitter of the snow illuminated by the light of the moon gleaming high and cold in the starry night. Legolas’ quiet, expectant breath.

“You have this option, Legolas,” she says to him when there is no longer any way she can delay her words, “to you, this is a choice. You can leave the world and sail away to a blessed land where there is no such earthly strife. I, Silvan that I am, do not have such a choice. I cannot escape, even should I want to.”

“But you do not want to.” Legolas says simply, and Tauriel shakes her head. She has been waiting for this moment and at last it has arrived.

“You did not come with me,” Legolas sighs, “you chose to stay, that night in Esgaroth. You chose to save him. Why?” the question comes out sharper perhaps than Legolas intended and Tauriel turns to appraise her friend with a wary eye.

His face is calm as always, but there is confusion in his eyes, and hurt.

“Had it been…anyone but him…” Tauriel admits in a whisper, closing her eyes. She does not want to see Legolas’ reaction.

“ _Why_ , Tauriel? Why _that Dwarf_?”

“I don’t know. If I knew, if I could chose, do you think I would have chosen this?” she opens her eyes, slides off the rock and whirls on Legolas, pinning him with a fierce flaming glare. “If I could choose the way my heart is moved, Legolas, I would have chosen the easy way. Could I choose, I would still be Captain of the Guard and serving my King instead of trying to rebuild a land that may well be better off abandoned, and a…” but here she stops dead as if run into a wall, and her face falls.

She cannot bear to look at Legolas now.

“He has taken you from me,” Legolas says, he too slithering off the rock onto the ground, “it is he that took your heart and turned you away from all that you know and love.”

She cannot bear the scathing, angry tone to his voice, but she still cannot face him. This is not Kili’s fault.

“I know,” Tauriel says, “that you hate him. You hate them all. They are so different from you that you cannot possibly dream of reconciling yourself in any way other than as some sort of gracious overlord lending assistance when they call. Do not argue with me!” Tauriel says, spinning around as she hears him take a breath to speak, “I am not wrong! I know you, Legolas Thranduilion, Legolas Greenleaf of the Woodland Realm. You should know then that of all this, the one thing I did choose was him. And I will always choose him.”

“Him over me? Him over your best friend?”

“Are you my best friend? You say you agree with my words, but you still cannot see Dwarves, or even Men as anything other than lesser beings.”

“They are mortal.”

“Men are Ilúvatar’s children, just as we. The Dwarves are welcomed by him.”

Tauriel’s anger is draining away into a small quiet sadness, the kind that clings and bites and does not let go. Tauriel will feel this pain in her heart for a long time.

“Do as you wish,” Legolas says, his face cold. It breaks Tauriel’s heart. He steps away from her, and she can barely restrain herself from reaching out. “On this I do not agree with you. I am leaving now, but…” for a brief moment, his face softens and Tauriel feels a tiny ember of hope and warmth nestle into her heart, “one day I shall return. You will always be my friend, Tauriel. Despite this.”

“Despite this,” Tauriel echoes, and sighs. “Goodbye,” she whispers, and Legolas bows to her with a tiny sad smile before he turns and runs into the darkness.

She watches him go for a long time, until his figure disappears beyond her vision.


	3. Eight Weeks After

The first Caravans from Erebor are due in a week, and Fili’s coronation is now less a vague future abstract and more a concrete reality. This all still feels like a bit of an adventure to him – pacing around Erebor, examining the damage and helping with repairs, people he’s known all his life cuffing him around the head and calling him an idiot. It doesn’t feel serious, really. It doesn’t feel real.

In the middle of the night, Fili gets out of bed and pulls on his jacket and boots. He can’t sleep, so he goes for walk.

The halls of Erebor are silent and still, and walks idly around until his feet carry him to the throne room.

The immense vault fades into darkness above and below the wide passage of stone, at the end of which the throne of Erebor rests. The top part of the throne where the Arkenstone used to sit has been smoothed over, re-crafted in a new pattern. He stands for a long time at the foot of the stairs, just staring.

This is not mine, he thinks, I cannot sit there.

But sit there he does. Slowly, almost without noticing it, he climbs the steps, pauses before the throne. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath.

“I’m sorry, Indad,” he says aloud to the silence and the stone, “this should have been you.”

Then he turns, sits on the throne, and surveys the darkness around him.

It does not feel like he thought it would. Perhaps, if he was wearing a crown and was surrounded by his people…his scattered people, brought together again not by the majesty of their homeland but by the promise of gold.

If only they knew.

He’d get rid of all the gold in the mountain, if he could. Cleanse them of Smaug and the cursed darkness that surrounded the Arkenstone and corrupted Thorin’s mind. And although he is glad to be in Erebor, a part of him does miss Ered Luin. Misses his mother’s hearth and the merchant caravans passing back and forth.

He knows those times were hard, that his mother and uncle lied to him and Kili, persuading them that all was well. He knows there was poverty, hunger. That Thorin held their people together with his strength and his conviction. But he is not Thorin.

“You suit it lad.”

Fili starts violently, leaping off the throne, but it’s only Dwalin. The warrior steps out of the shadows, surveying Fili with a knowing eye.

“Ah,” Fili says, looking back at the hard cold seat he has just vacated, “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right.”

“It will,” Dwalin assures him, and Fili nods, trusts his words.

“Being King…it won’t be like you expect it will be. It will be hard,” Dwalin warns, and Fili smiles wryly.

“I know. That much, at least, Thorin taught me. I’ll never be like him, though.”

“No, and you shouldn’t strive to be,” Dwalin says, coming closer and laying an arm on the young King’s shoulder. “Thorin was his own Dwarf, King under exceptional circumstances and strife. You’ll be your own person and your own King, lad. I have faith in you.”

“I’m glad you do, at least,” Fili says with a sigh, “I’m not sure I even have faith in myself.”

“I’d advise you to find some,” Dwalin says, “since your coronation is in less than a fortnight.”

Dwalin makes to go, to leave Fili to his thoughts, but then he turns back.

“How’s your brother?” he asks and Fili shrugs his shoulder.

“I don’t know. Sometimes I think he’s getting better, but other times…he’s not himself. I want my brother back, the way he used to be. I miss him.”

“We’ve all been changed, laddie,” Dwalin says, clapping Fili on the shoulder with a sad smile.

 

-

 

Today, Bard is overseeing the guards. They are in the depths of winter now, although luckily the snow has been light this year. There is a flurry piled up around the (repaired) gates to the guard barracks, the depth of which Bard rather under-estimates. With wet boots and cold feet, he stands at the steps of the offices, watching guards practise their drills. Many of them were guards in Laketown but some are new recruits.

Tauriel stands two steps down from him, beaming at the guard like a proud parent. Stepping down the two steps that separate them he comes to stand beside the Elf, who looks at him in surprise.

“You’ve done a fine job here,” he says to her.

“It was hardly I who solely oversaw the training, but I thank you.”

“Nevertheless it is thanks to you that we have a guard that look as if they may actually be able to guard things – rather unlike those in Laketown, hmmn?”

Tauriel smirks and nods and looks away over the drills, her eyes on two recruits in particular. Both young women, they had signed up for the guard despite Cathan’s protestations.

“You can’t turn us away because we’re women,” Ana had said with a bright gleam in her eye, “Tauriel was _Captain_ of the guard in Mirkwood, and _she’s_ a woman.”

Cathan could find no fault with their arguments, and so into the guard they were recruited.

“What do you plan to do, Tauriel?” Bard asks and she looks at him in surprise.

“You have a long life ahead of you,” he clarifies, “and you cannot return to Mirkwood. I like to think that one day you will able to return to your homeland but at present you and King Thranduil are at something of an impasse.”

“An impasse, yes,” Tauriel says, “I like that word. It makes our disagreement seem so much more dignified than cries of treason and exile.”

There is an ironic humour in her tone and Bard goes with it, smiling dryly.

“Nevertheless,” he says, “you are here and not there, with ties to Erebor too.”

“There is little future for me in Erebor, so far as anything more than idleness is concerned. Kili concerns himself with politics and blacksmithing, and I can do neither of those within Dwarvish halls. I will spend much time there, I think,” if Elves could blush, she would be blushing, “but not in a…well, an occupational capacity.”

“Hmn. How then would you feel about reclaiming your old post?”

Tauriel frowns.

“But I cannot – Mirkwood is sealed from me…”

“Ah, I should have clarified – your old title, perhaps. Captain of the Guard. The Dale Guard.”

Tauriel takes a deep breath inward which Bard equates with a gasp.

“I…I could not, I am an Elf!”

Bard shrugs.

“Does it matter? You’re being courted by the Crown Prince of Erebor who is, incidentally, a Dwarf. I didn’t think such things mattered to you.”

“I…they do not matter to me, it is just…would your Guard not rather be led by one of their own?”

“I don’t know,” Bard says mildly, “shall we ask them?”

Tauriel stays silent as Bard calls out to the men and women in the yard, who all turn to face him attentively. He has spoken to many of them already with regards to their leadership, and has been met with resounding approval.

“For her benefit,” he announces to them, “all in favour of Tauriel taking up the currently unoccupied position of Captain of the Guard, say aye.”

“AYE!” comes the resounding call. Tauriel looks flustered and flabbergasted and pleased.

“Congratulations,” Bard says, turning to her with a smile, “I think you’ll find they’re quite happy to have you at the post.”

Tauriel does not, he thinks, quite understand what she has done for them, for all of them. She and Kili have quite unexpectedly begun to break down the barriers between the races, and Bard has hopes that soon all three races will find themselves friends. More effort will be required to persuade Thranduil, but he believes his people will be willing.

And then, too, all that she has done for his people. Her healing skills are a gift, and with quiet grace she taught the healers the lore of her people. And then with the guard, who she both trained and worked alongside. She is one of them, even though she doesn’t realise it. Tall, immortal and Elven as she is, she has been accepted by the people of Dale.

Bard has great faith in the future of Dale, and Erebor too, if both Kingdoms have her and Kili working behind the scenes to promote peace and plenty.

“Thranduil,” he says to her, “truly does not appreciate what he is missing.”

This makes her laugh, and as she lightly bows in acknowledgement of the applause of the guard, she does so with a joyful smile.

 

 

-

Tauriel finds Kili on the balcony overlooking the Hall of the Kings, the floor of which is polished gold thanks to a failed attempt to kill Smaug. Seems odd to her to try and kill a dragon with fire, but then, Dwarves are odd. She wonders if she will ever understand them.

She greets him and he starts slightly, turning around quickly but relaxing when he sees her.

“You sneak up so quietly,” he complains with a smile as she approaches toward him on silent feet.

“I shouldn’t wonder,” she replies, “you must hear your kin stomping around a mile off, those big heavy boots you all wear.”

Kili glances down at the offending footwear.

“They’re practical,” he says, and raises an eyebrow at Tauriel’s soft leather shoes, “unlike those.”

“Practical for different things, I suppose. These, for example, are practical for running silently through the undergrowth. Those are practical for dropping anvils on.”

“I wouldn’t say such things so lightly,” Kili warns with a slight smile, “worse things have happened and these good sturdy Dwarvish boots have seen us through good and proper.”

Tauriel laughs.

“I don’t doubt it!”

Kili laughs, but falls silent quickly. He does not laugh for as long as he used to.

“How are you?” Tauriel asks, coming to stand beside him and peering out across the vast depths of the chamber.

“I’ve been worse,” Kili says, “but I’ve been better.”

“Do you want to leave?” Tauriel asks suddenly (she doesn’t even know where the words came from, they flowed so quickly from mind to mouth) and Kili frowns up at her.

“Not forever – I just meant, for a short while. Leave for the day. Go hunting, perhaps.”

“What game will be about in winter?” Kili grumbles, but he looks cheerful at the thought.

Tauriel thinks for a moment.

“Hares, if nothing else,” she says, “and although I know little of mountainous terrain I believe that sometime giant cats can be found. Hunting them would make for quite a challenge.”

“Snow cats,” Kili has definitely perked up now, eyes shining as he considers her words, “yeah, Mum used to tell us this one story about the time she and her other brother Frerin snuck out of the mountain and almost got eaten by one!”

“Really?” Tauriel asks, surprised but oddly delighted at Kili’s passionate retelling of the tale.

“Ah, Mum tells it better,” he says, as they walk back through the wide passageways towards the armoury, where Kili has left his weapons. Tauriel wonders if they have gone untouched since the battle, but doesn’t ask.

“From what I can tell of it though,” Kili continues, “she and Frerin were about knee high to a Hobbit and annoyed at their nanny because she made them go to bed without supper! A perfectly warranted punishment, I’m sure, but tiny Crown Prince Frerin and Princess Dis were having no such punishment, thank you very much!”

Kili is a natural storyteller – this she has known since the Mirkwood days when they sat together on either side of the bars, regaling each other with tales of their lives. He had laughed more then, but still. It gives Tauriel great joy to see him smiling.

He continues the tale of the tiny Dwarves braving the cold armed only with a stick and a spoon. He falters only briefly when they reach the armoury, but upon seeing his weapons (cleaned and stacked away) he throws them over his back and leads Tauriel back to the main gates. They have been properly rebuilt in the seven weeks since Smaug, and are a sight to behold.

Dwalin is sitting on a stool beside the left gate, sharpening his axe menacingly, but when he sees Kili he smiles.

“It’s good to see you out and about, laddie,” he says, although he does eye Tauriel with great suspicion.

“Aye,” Kili says, “we’re off to see about hunting some snow cats. I’ve been telling Tauriel about Mum’s little run in with one.”

“Ah,” Dwalin says with a knowing look in his eye, “has he got to the part where I come in and save the day?” he addresses this last part directly to Tauriel, who is surprised since she knows Dwalin doesn’t like her (she distinctly remembers hearing him mutter about ‘meddling Elvish toffee-nosed bastards’ when he walked in on she and Fili talking in the kitchens).

“I…no, he hasn’t” she says, with an interested look sideways at Kili, who shrugs and smiles at her.

“Aye, well,” Dwalin says, putting his axe down with a clunk, “I was out in a hunting party of one –”

“Mum always says you were having a sulk.”

“Shut it, Kili.”

“Sorry.”

“Anyway, I was out hunting by myself on the mountain, it was very early so the game was really starting to wake up and smell the air, when I heard squeaking from a fair distance away. Would have thought it was mice at first, except for that I could see the snow cat sitting on top of a boulder. Mice aren’t quite what snow cats like, you see.

“So I ran over and killed it with my axe – it was a tough fight, I have to admit, but I was young then and a bit green still. The thing turned and snarled as soon as it heard me and it was twice my length and twice my height. With a vicious snarl it lunged and I feinted, but the beast was smarter than that and went straight for my neck. I got my axe up in time and drew blood which made it wild, I can tell you that much. I was just thinking of trying to get far enough away to put a good arrow in it when out from the snow rises this tiny creature – Dis, it was – and she hurls the spoon at the head of the cat screaming blue murder.

It turned around snarling and went for her, but it gave me the time to draw my sword and I was still close enough to go for the kill.”

“My mother, the spoon warrior,” Kili says, grinning with delight, and Dwalin laughs.

“Aye laddie, that she is. The toughest nut to crack. Fearless.”

He looks at Tauriel as he says this last sentence with an odd look on his face, and whilst Tauriel meets his eye she feels oddly disconcerted.

As they leave the gates and step out into the bracing chill, Tauriel hmmns thoughtfully.

“What?” Kili asks, stepping carefully around a snow drift which Tauriel walks over.

“I think I’ve been challenged,” she says, and Kili laughs.

“What, by Dwalin’s stories about how fearless he is? He challenged everyone, don’t worry.”

“Dwalin is no trouble,” she assures him, and he laughs, “no, I rather think he was challenging me to be…well, to compete on a par with your mother.”

“Oh,” Kili says, and frowns. They’re walking east, away from Dale, from which Tauriel can hear a great clattering and the bubble of voices. Market day, she thinks absentmindedly.

“For the record, Tauriel, I think Mum would like you.”

“Oh?” Tauriel finds herself surprised by how much she wants to meet with the approval of the fierce Dwarvish warrior that raised Kili and Fili.

“She may have a bit of difficulty coming to terms with the Elvish thing, but I think when she comes to see your personality, who you really are – yeah, she’ll definitely like you.” Kili, who had been walking quickly to keep up with Tauriel’s longer legs up until this point, suddenly stops. Tauriel goes a few steps further before she notices, and then turns quickly back.

He is standing still, knee deep in snow, face stricken.

“Kili? Are you alright?”

“I don’t think I can do this, Tauriel,” Kili says quietly. His eyes are wide as he stares around. The battlefield has long since been covered in a thick layer of snow, but still. Kili has not left the mountain since the battle.

“You can,” Tauriel says softly, kneeling in the snow to be closer to his height. His breath is short and his hands are shaking.

“I…I want to,” he says slowly, carefully, “I want to…get out, be here, do things, but… I just… _can’t_.”

He presses a hand to his face, biting down hard on his palm.

“It’s alright,” Tauriel says to him gently, even though it isn’t really – her heart is breaking for him and his is already shattered. Carefully, she reaches a tentative hand towards him, touches his shoulder, the back of his hand.

With a deep breath he looks up, and as he does so turns his hand around palm outward, pressing it against Tauriel’s own.

“I don’t understand,” he says, “why I am affected so badly.”

“Because you watched someone you love die, and there was nothing you could have done to save them.”

Kili turns his face towards Tauriel when she says this and, reading something in her expression that mirrors his own, turns fully to face her. Moving at the same time as he, she slips the hand that had been on his shoulder, and rests it over his heart.

He smiles, but it bears no mirth. It is a knowing smile.

“Who could you not save?” he asks her.

She is still. The wind lifts her hair, lifts Kili’s, dancing. She can feel Kili’s heart beating fast beneath her fingertips. Feel her own, loud in her ears.

“My parents,” she says, and although she speaks with no emotion Kili can read her well, “they fell in battle when I was very young. Orcs, in the woodland realm. They attacked our home, and I survived only because reinforcements arrived in time. My parents were not warriors. They had little chance.”

“I’m sorry,” Kili says.

“As am I.”

“Is that why…is that why you saved me?” Kili asks. His voice is steadier now, his hands no longer shaking. After a pause, Tauriel dips her head.

“Yes. I...I could not let you die when you could have been saved. I knew – know – too well the pain of futile loss.”

Kili knots his fingers through hers ad she looks up at him, surprised.

“Thank you,” he says, “for sparing not just me, but my family as well. You have a kind heart, Tauriel.”

“As do you,” she replies, “hide it as you may in pranks and tomfoolery.”

He laughs a small, short laugh, but it is genuine.

“I think I can do this,” he says, meaning being out here, meaning hunting, meaning life. “I’m not alone.”

“You never were,” Tauriel promises.

He kisses her then, briefly and softly. He cups her cheek with the hand not holding hers, and although his lips are cold and his hand rough and his face damp with tears he’ll never admit to, it is everything that Tauriel has ever wanted.

He is everything that she has ever wanted.

“I love you,” he says when they come apart. “I don’t think I could have done this without you.”

“Fili would have bullied you into starting the healing process eventually,” she says, and he grimaces.

“I love my brother very much, but I’m not going to kiss him,” he says, and Tauriel laughs. Kili laughs too, but the smile dissolved quickly into a worried frown.

“It will get easier?” he asks, seeking confirmation and comfort. She nods.

“It will take time, but yes. It will get easier.”

He nods and takes a deep steeling breath and she lets go of him, standing and brushing snow off of her knees.

“Come, my love,” she says firmly, “we have a snow cat to kill!”

“Aye,” Kili smirks up at her, “that we do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I enjoyed writing this little three-parter. I hope you all enjoyed reading it u.u


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